Library

Map of Future Forces Affecting Sustainability

Jeff Burgan — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 15:34:42 -0700

Twenty years ago, terms such as "sustainability," "environmentalism," and "health" were virtually unknown in business strategy circles. Today, all of these concepts have evolved broader and more complex definitions and they have moved from the margins to the center of business activity.

Ten-Year Forecast

Science in Place: Program Announcement and Prospectus

Anthony Townsend — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 05:27:08 -0700

This download contains full information on background, research agenda, membership and deliverables for IFTF's Science in Place research program.

Please contact Anthony Townsend at +1-650-233-9522 for more information.

Science In Place

The Future of Health and Wellness in Food Retailing

Neela Nuristani — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 15:17:18 -0700

In May 2008, the Coca-Cola Retailing Research Council (CCRRC) publicly released the results of a year-long research endeavor by the Institute for the Future's Health Horizons Program, studying the Future of Health and Wellness in Food Retailing. This project helps food retailers connect the dots between food and health, design strategic processes that help retail stores respond to this future, and offer their customers a more holistic approach to food retail.

Three main deliverables resulting from this project can be downloaded in PDF format (see above links):

Health Horizons

Boomers: The Next 20 Years Map of Future Landscape Affecting Boomers

Miriam Lueck — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 09:22:38 -0700

As boomers move into their 60s and 70s over the next 20 years, they
will not only carry their revolutionary history with them. They will
extend it into a new realm. Biology, the very basis of human life, will
be up for grabs as boomers make choices about physical aging that no
previous generation has had to make.

Boomers: The Next 20 Years

Future of Making Map [SR-1154]

Jeff Burgan — Thu, 01 May 2008 16:08:50 -0700

Two future forces, one mostly social, one mostly technological, are intersecting to transform how goods, services, and experiences—the “stuff” of our world—will be designed, manufactured, and distributed over the next decade. An emerging do-it-yourself culture of “makers” is boldly voiding warranties to tweak, hack, and customize the products they buy. And what they can’t purchase, they build from scratch. Meanwhile, flexible manufacturing technologies on the horizon will change fabrication from massive and centralized to lightweight and ad hoc.

Technology Horizons

40+10 Years of Foresight [SR-1094]

Jess Hemerly — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 10:39:55 -0700

The future is everything we can imagine: the fearsome, the inspiring, the inexplicable, the essential. 40 years ago, our founders imagined a world in which it would be possible to improve human lives and build better institutions by thinking systematically about the future. Today, we call this practice "Foresight to Insight to Action."

This map is a dynamic work-in-progress, and will likely change throughout the year. Stay tuned for updates.

Ten-Year Forecast

Biocitizens and New Media Technology Conference Briefing [SR-1133]

Vivian Distler — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 21:50:03 -0800

The Biocitizens and New Media Technology conference explored the convergence of trends around new media, health, and biocitizenship. After the conference, we launched a new Web site (http://biocitizennewmedia.org)(password required) to demonstrate the participatory nature of new media. The Web site sought to encourage interactive communication with our clients around the potential implications of engaged biocitizens equipped with new media tools.

Health Horizons

The Biocitizen and New Media Technologies -- Spring 2007 Conference Materials

Vivian Distler — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0800

The Health Horizons Spring 2007 Conference examined the emergence of biocitizens and the role of new media technologies. The PowerPoint presentations are available as part of this post, along with the graphic recording wall charts and the agenda booklet.

Health Horizons

Rethinking Business Models in the Global Health Economy [SR-1038]

Vivian Distler — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 12:53:53 -0700

Health costs continue to skyrocket in industrialized countries. Populations are living longer and are subject to a greater number of chronic conditions such as obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. More people are considering the ethical implications of a consumer-based global economy in general (think of global warming and other ecological disasters) and scientific advances in biotechnology in particular (think of the debates on genetically modified foods and cloning).

Health Horizons

Sensory Transformation: New Tools & Practices for Overcoming Cognitive Overload [SR-1057]

Jess Hemerly — Tue, 01 May 2007 13:44:14 -0700

Information overload has become a cliche. We use the phrase half-jokingly to describe the stress associated with the onslaught of media that digital technology has unleashed on us. The sobering reality is that we ain't seen nothin' yet. The vast majority of new information technologies are either built for data acquisition (e.g., sensor networks and camera phones) or information dissemination (e.g., blogs, RSS, location-enhanced media, and aware environments).

Technology Horizons

Smart Infrastructures: Computational Resources to Burn [SR-1042]

Jess Hemerly — Tue, 01 May 2007 01:33:03 -0700

Over the next 15–20 years we will overcome limits in availability of our computational resources. While today, high-performance computing applications are mostly limited to capital-intensive industries like petroleum exploration, aircraft and automotive design, and pharmaceuticals, over time these capabilities will migrate to mass markets and eventually into the hands of consumers. In this world of abundant computing, our interactions with computers will no longer be constrained to laptops, desktops, and handhelds.

Technology Horizons

2007 Map of the Decade [SR-1065]

Kathi Vian — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 00:00:00 -0700

The coming decade is the embarking. Spurred by unavoidable signs of a planet at risk, we begin to look for new ways of living, new ways of measuring and valuing the world around us. What was marginal begins to look mainstream, as people who have been tending the edges of our global culture demand our attention and capture our imagina- tions with unexpected templates for what is possible when the familiar order isn’t quite so orderly.

Ten-Year Forecast

2007 Ten-Year Forecast Perspectives [SR-1064]

Kathi Vian — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 00:00:00 -0700

The future is a passage through worlds we’ve yet to imagine.

Human transitions are accomplished through passages—whether culturally sanctioned personal rites of passage or huge migrations that, only in retrospect, can be seen as movements from one way of life to another. These passages are often stormy, frightening, chaotic. They call on previously untapped human abilities, both personal and cultural, to navigate through worlds that appear to be disintegrating, hopefully to put the pieces back together in a new configuration, a new kind of living.

Ten-Year Forecast

Health Horizons 2006 Signal Series

Vivian Distler — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 07:56:55 -0800

Three articles:

Open Source Molecular Biology (Jody Ranck)
Anytime, Anyplace Delivery in Health Care (Richard Adler)
Eco-Health Literacy (David Kaisel)

Health Horizons

Intentional Biology: Nature as Source and Code [SR-1051]

Jess Hemerly — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 09:58:51 -0800

For most of our history, humans have treated Nature as a gigantic warehouse and commissary. The natural world has been a source of raw materials, food, and other resources. Today, rapid advances in biological science and the growth of nanotechnology are taking that inspiration to a new level and driving the creation of a new field: intentional biology. Intentional biology, and its two main subfields biomimicry and synthetic biology, treat nature not as a source of raw materials, but as source and code.

Technology Horizons

Innovation in the Urban Wilderness: Lightweight Infrastructure Meets Cooperative Strategy [SR-1050]

Jess Hemerly — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 09:36:06 -0800

Every day brings new evidence of the planet’s urban transformation. And this demographic transformation to a world of cities is only halfway complete: by the time it has run its course in 2050, one of every three people worldwide will be living in a slum. But there are reasons for hope in the world’s slums, as these extreme environments are creating crucibles for innovation. While multiple forces threaten to destabilize these newest and largest cities, they are also driving adaptations that combine new technologies and new forms of organization.

Technology Horizons

Zones of Instability: A Context for Technology Adoption [SR-1032]

Jess Hemerly — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 00:00:00 -0800

A technology or tool must meet a need or desire or help alleviate a problem to be used on a regular basis, and thus create a successful market for itself. To understand the changing landscape of needs, desires, fears, and pains in some of the world’s largest and most dynamic places—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and Silicon Valley (what we are calling BRIC+S)—this report describes the key "zones of instability" facing ordinary families.

Technology Horizons

The Many Faces of Context Awareness: A Spectrum of Technologies, Applications, and Impacts [SR-1014]

Jess Hemerly — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 10:30:04 -0700

In 1988, Mark Weiser laid the foundation for what he called the third wave of computing. The first wave was mainframe computing, followed by the second wave of desktop computing. The third wave, would be a kind of ubiquitous computing—in which technology would recede into the background of our lives. The world is now on the brink of this third wave, and at the heart of it is something we might call context awareness.

Technology Horizons

Obesity: Mapping the Lifecycle of Response [SR-987]

Mike Love — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 00:00:00 -0700

We need only to pick up a magazine or turn on the news to see that there is a furor about obesity. From the halls of public health and corporate boardrooms to tabloid newspapers and women’s magazines people are talking about obesity. A social response is shaping up that is poised to move private behavior into the public domain and broaden the target of intervention from the individual to both the individual and the social, physical, and food environments. Over the next decade, this response to obesity will influence the environments in which we do business and pursue health.

Health Horizons

Science & Technology Outlook: 2005-2055 [SR-1011 & SR-967]

Jess Hemerly — Sat, 20 May 2006 15:10:15 -0700

In 2005, the U.K. Government’s Office of Science and Technology asked us to take a comprehensive look at the future of science and technology 10, 20, and 50 years out.

Technology Horizons

All the World's a Game: The Future of Context-Aware Gaming [SR-997]

Jess Hemerly — Mon, 01 May 2006 10:20:25 -0700

Imagine that every movement of the body is a potential means of control, where a wave of the hand casts a spell or fights off an enemy. Imagine, as this graffiti suggests, if the streets actually were alive with hidden layers of stuff, waiting for someone to come along and use it in entirely new ways. These what-if scenarios begin to describe the world of what we call context-aware gaming. A context-aware game uses physical and digital information about the current status of the player to shape how the game is played.

Technology Horizons

Global Health Economy Map [PDF]

Mike Love — Mon, 01 May 2006 00:00:00 -0700

Health benefits increasingly define consumer value. With more responsibility for the cost of their health care, people are turning to the broader marketplace for solutions rather than just the traditional health care delivery system. this trend is accompanied by an expansion of what it means to be healthy, what is considered therapeutic, and what is an appropriate site for intervention or treatment.

Health Horizons

2006 Ten-Year Forecast Perspectives [SR-945]

Kathi Vian — Mon, 01 May 2006 00:00:00 -0700

A decade of shapeshifting. The material and the digital worlds have traditionally struggled against each other, each working to overcome the constraints or mimic the affordances of the other. Now, pervasive technologies are bringing about a partnership between the material and digital, and the relationships among humans, machines, and environments are becoming more tightly interconnected and interdependent.

Ten-Year Forecast

Global Health Mapping [SR-970]

Mike Love — Sun, 01 Jan 2006 12:50:09 -0800

Global health matters to a wide range of stakeholders for pragmatic as well as idealistic reasons. The human and economic costs of disease are substantial, whether they derive from infections, environmental causes, or structural issues such as poverty, lack of education, or armed conﬂict. One tool for usefully organizing an approach to this extremely complex set of topics is a conceptual framework of health risks, inputs, outcomes, and opportunities.

Health Horizons

2006 Map of the Decade [SR-977]

Kathi Vian — Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -0800

A group economy threads together past visions of emergence, new kinds of capital, collective action, grassroots economics, and smart networks—and undoes our traditional ideas about economies of scale and the role of large institutions.
Meanwhile, lightweight infrastructures spin complex and creative ecologies out of very small world technologies, individual agency, and smart networks, building grassroots economics into physical structures that bind us together even as we pursue our own ends.

Ten-Year Forecast

The Future of RFID: A Series of Memos [SR-926]

Jess Hemerly — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 15:42:28 -0800

To help Technology Horizons Program members understand the long-term potential RFID, the Institute for the Future (IFTF) has
undertaken a project to map the future of RFID beyond the supply
chain. Even though companies are struggling with the Wal-Mart and Tesco mandates to add RFID tags to pallets and cases of goods, it’s not too early to begin thinking about how the technology could be used outside the supply chain. Our findings are presented in a series of five memos.

The memos are as follow:

Thinking About RFID [SR-926A]
- Technology Horizons
read more

Rapid Decision Making for Complex Issues [SR-935]

Kathi Vian — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 11:38:04 -0700

A new capacity for rapid, ad hoc, and distributed decision making is emerging from the intersection of technologies of cooperation and new knowledge about the nature of cooperation and cooperative strategies. This report investigates the challenges, strategies, technologies, and best practices that will shape this new capacity.

Ten-Year Forecast

New Strategic Pathways in Business: Leveraging Technologies of Cooperation [SR-927]

Jess Hemerly — Wed, 01 Jun 2005 15:23:28 -0700

Emerging digital technologies present a range of catalysts for enabling new social arrangements that will transform our business and social institutions. In particular, new technologies of cooperation will enable social arrangements that help us develop new complex cooperative strategies. Such transformation has happened in the past, with the development of the printing press that led to broader literacy and public discourse, which ultimately shaped the development of democratic society.

Technology Horizons

2005 Ten-Year Forecast Perspectives [SR-891]

Mike Love — Sun, 01 May 2005 11:45:50 -0700

The truth is that we humans face tough times ahead—not 50 to 100 years from now, but by the end of this decade. Whether or not we believe that CO2 is a pollutant responsible for global climate change, the truth is that extreme climate events will increasingly threaten crops, ocean-side properties, city infrastructures, and human life within the coming decade. Megacities will sprawl across the developed and developing world alike, their ecological footprints stepping all over one another.

Ten-Year Forecast

Top Ten Impediments to Better Health & Health Care in the United States [SR-900]

Jess Hemerly — Sun, 01 May 2005 00:00:00 -0700

Health care is a central “good,” to use the economists’ term, and makes up a large and ever growing part of the U.S. economy. Unfortunately, despite much to be proud of,there’s ample room for improvement. Indeed, some would argue that, with its skyrocketing costs, uneven access and quality, misaligned incentives, and uninsured patients, the U.S. health care system is nowhere near what the world’s richest and most powerful country should be able to achieve. This report examines that gap.

Health Horizons

2005 Map of the Decade [SR-910]

Jess Hemerly — Sun, 01 May 2005 00:00:00 -0700

The future is a look around the corner, a different perspective on the place we live right now.

The perspective this year is sober. We humans are fundamentally changing the face of the earth. We are about to become a predominantly urban species, living in megacities of over 20 million inhabitants. We are altering the global climate, creating extreme variations in intensity of natural weather events. We are becoming more extreme in our political and religious views and more dependent on complex, and ultimately vulnerable, technological infrastructures.

Ten-Year Forecast

The Future of Nutrigenomics: From the Lab to the Dining Room [SR-889]

Jess Hemerly — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 00:00:00 -0800

The dramatic scientific advances of the Human Genome Project—the mapping of the entire human genome—are revolutionizing the way we think about health, illness, and disease prevention. Not only do advances in genomics increase our understanding of the inherited basis of disease, allow us to develop new drugs with specific molecular targets, and help us to understand why drugs are more effective or more toxic in people with certain genetic characteristics, they also promise to revolutionize our understanding of nutrition and how people differ in their response to nutrients.

Health Horizons

Personal Health Ecologies: Mapping Consumer Health Management in the Next Decade [SR-876]

Jess Hemerly — Tue, 01 Feb 2005 00:00:00 -0800

As markets fragment, it is increasingly difficult to identify meaningful patterns of consumer behavior. Health and health care consumers are no exception. Knowing demographic characteristics, insurance status, and even health status are no longer enough to gain strategic insight into consumer health markets. Instead, health care and health-oriented companies must seek to understand the strategies and practices that consumers engage in, that is, the things people do to manage their health. This approach requires building consumer understanding in a different way.

Health Horizons

Technologies of Cooperation [SR-897]

Jess Hemerly — Sat, 01 Jan 2005 00:00:00 -0800

Emerging digital technologies present new opportunities for developing complex cooperative strategies that change the way people work together to solve problems and generate wealth. Central to this class of cooperation-amplifying technologies are eight key clusters, each with distinctive contributions to cooperative strategy.

Ten-Year Forecast

Infrastructure for the New Geography [SR-869]

Jess Hemerly — Sun, 01 Aug 2004 12:01:33 -0700

A new physical-digital landscape is emerging, linking places and spaces to unprecedented amounts of information. The infrastructure that will enable this new landscape—the emerging geoweb—is actually a rich ecology, including technologies, policies, data repositories, and skill sets. This memo describes the emerging ecology—what it is, why it's important, who the key players are, and what future developments to expect.

Technology Horizons

Towards a New Literacy of Cooperation in Business [SR-851A]

Mike Love — Tue, 01 Jun 2004 00:00:00 -0700

Traditional business strategy is organized around competition: win–lose models fueled by SWOT analyses, market share frameworks, hard measurement, and protection of quantifiable private assets.
In mature industries, cooperation is confined to supporting industry associations, which focus on issues of common concerns such as tax rules, and professional bodies, which set common technical standards.

Technology Horizons

2004 Ten-Year Forecast: Perspectives [SR-829]

Mike Love — Sat, 01 May 2004 00:00:00 -0700

Long a mantra at the Institute for the Future, this principle is particularly important in times that serve up more than the usual quantum of surprises and uncertainty. Indeed, this decade has so preoccupied us with surprises that nearly halfway into it, it is the first decade in a century to have no name. Perhaps it is because events are still too new to allow a label to settle in. Or perhaps the name-defining event has yet to occur. Until a name emerges, however, the very namelessness of the decade is itself a compelling indicator of the challenge of making sense of the next ten years.

Ten-Year Forecast

The New Spatial Landscape: Artifacts from the Future [SR-834]

Mike Love — Sat, 01 May 2004 00:00:00 -0700

A place can be described by a set of coordinates—longitude, latitude, and altitude. It can also be described through stories—experiences and memories that are deeply rooted in a particular locale and are often intimately shaped by it. Ancient Greeks had two words for place, signifying these two different ways of thinking about it—“topos”and “choros.” Topos referred to location—objective, physical features of a place. Choros provided a holistic reference to a place as an experience, a trigger for memory and imagination.

Technology Horizons

Expanding Meanings of Health [SR-815B]

Mike Love — Thu, 01 Jan 2004 00:00:00 -0800

In this report, Expanding Meanings of Health, we consider the business implications of key changes in the consumer health landscape. This landscape comprises the information, technologies, products, and services within and outsidethe health care delivery system, as well as the strategies and practices consumers use to manage their health, interact with the health care delivery system, and make decisions.

Health Horizons

A New Era of Diagnostics [SR-821B]

Mike Love — Mon, 01 Dec 2003 00:00:00 -0800

Health care almost always begins with a diagnostic work-up: listening to the patient’s complaint and history, examining the patient, and testing. It’s the point when the physician determines, via some form of observation or measurement, that there’s been a change in the patient’s anatomy or physiology. And in many cases the news of a diagnosis from the physician changes the patient’s life.

Health Horizons